Paul Finebaum addresses ESPN's role in college football controversy

One largely unsaid part of the debate around a potential 24-team College Football Playoff is that any expansion beyond 16 teams would reopen the market for broadcast rights to early-round games, allowing new partners to come in alongside ESPN.

This is, in addition to the added sponsorship and ticket revenue from the extra Playoff games, why it would be seemingly so lucrative for the CFP to expand.

On Tuesday’s episode of Get Up, college football commentator Paul Finebaum, live from SEC Media Days in Florida, addressed this dynamic head-on. While obvious to most outsiders, Finebaum, of course, works for ESPN, making the conversation about ESPN’s role in the discussions far more unusual.

“I think ultimately, it will go to 24. There will be too much money at stake. And what the Big Ten and others want to do is make it an open market. Right now, ESPN has the exclusive contract, but it can’t go [past] 16 and retain that.”

Two years ago, ESPN inked a deal worth more than $1 billion annually for exclusive broadcast rights to the CFP —  while it sub-licenses some games to TNT Sports — it retains control of all CFP games under the current format. Prior reports have indicated that ESPN owns exclusive rights to the CFP in any format up to 14 teams. It’s unclear if Finebaum simply misspoke or if the network’s cap actually extends to 16, in which case other wannabe CFP broadcasters would need expansion beyond that number.

The Big Ten might be interested because its broadcast deal goes through Fox Sports, which would be a logical bidder for additional CFP inventory. Many see ESPN and the SEC as aligned in matters of college football, in opposition to the Big Ten-Fox alliance.

Later in the segment, Finebaum echoed previous complaints about a 24-team format, namely that the college football regular season would be greatly watered down. But he is one of the only analysts at his network to draw attention to the fact that ESPN is, in part, standing between one of college football’s major conferences and what it wants the sport to look like.

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